


Guiding Lightning Strike

by ModernMutiny



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (Well somewhat), Alcoholic Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Astrology, Gap Filler, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova are in Love, M/M, Missing Scene, Nicky also cooks to relieve stress, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Loves Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Nile Freeman Needs a Hug, Nile Freeman is Young, and it shows, nicky is a softie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:26:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26574469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernMutiny/pseuds/ModernMutiny
Summary: A series of missing/expanded moments in which the Old Guard stress over their newest arrival and prove they would all be Terrible with children.Title from Muse
Relationships: Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova & Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 21
Kudos: 96





	1. Pre-meeting jitters

**Author's Note:**

> let's be honest here, I wrote this with no goal in mind except to get these words out of my head and onto the page, so we'll see where this goes. Most likely we're looking at some fill-in-the-blanks here from this scene until the end of the movie, focusing on Nile's integration of the team. I do have the whole next chapter done as well (which is significantly longer than this one), so that'll go up sometime soon, after I've gotten some of the third chapter written. After that, we'll see.
> 
> Basically I'm down to sit back and enjoy the ride wherever it takes us, if you are. Enjoy!

Usually, Joe enjoyed France very much. The rolling greenery, the old streets, the plethora of options for good food and wine, all of it was quite nice and also just a touch romantic. The way Nicky’s mouth curled around French vowels alone was a sight to behold, and Joe very much adored watching his beloved try to discuss ingredients with the shop owners in town, frowning just slightly whenever he noticed his accent slip into his long deep Italian vowels, pulling his chin up as he tried to shorten his a’s and keep his consonants behind his teeth. They had spent quite a long time in the country, centuries ago as they trailed Booker back when he was misguidedly determined on keeping connected with his family, and Joe had almost solely happy memories to tie to those years, despite the revolutions and bloodshed of the time. He very much enjoyed those memories.

Joe did not enjoy France so much this time.

The atmosphere was tense, moreso than just the looming problem of Copley’s betrayal would merit. The first new immortal in over two centuries, but then again the first one to come after such a short interval. He and Nicky were only a few days apart, yes, but they were a package deal. Before that, it had been a century at least since Quynh arrived, and just over seven hundred years after them until Booker. The timeline seemed to be shrinking, and Joe wasn’t sure if that was because the world was progressing so much faster these days or because something bigger was starting to bubble up. For all their sakes, Joe hoped it was only the former.

Booker hid his unease in drink, as he was so often prone to, draining his flask so rapidly as he typed away on his computer that he soon had to resort to downing a glass (or five) of the cheap scotch he’d hidden away in the church the last time they were there, only a few decades ago.

Nicky - his sweet, loving Nicky - spent his time preparing for their imminent arrival. He swept away cobwebs, made up the beds (fretting for a moment that there were only three until Joe kindly pointed out that Andy doesn’t sleep when there’s work to do), and decided quite firmly that none of the food in the house was adequate for their first meal together as a newly expanded group.

“We cannot welcome her into our family on packaged noodles and canned meat, Joe,” Nicky said as he searched for the stash of money they’d hidden in the cabinets.

Joe kindly did not mention that they had left only francs in this safehouse, which were no longer valid currency. Reaching for his bag, he checked to make sure he had enough euros to buy them a few fresh ingredients at least, and transferred them into his wallet. “What would you have us make, then? Bourguignon? Lobster Thermidor?”

“I vote for the second,” Booker grunted from the corner, hunched so far over his computer Joe would be worried about him hurting his back if circumstances were different, “My birthday was in Thermidor, you know.”

Joe did know, actually. He spent some time back in the 1960’s learning all about astrology, in an effort to connect more with Nicky’s spiritual certainty. All he really learned was that Booker was an emotional mess and Andy had no idea what her birthday would even be. Joe pegged her as a Scorpio anyways. 

“Well, you can remind me to make that for your birthday then if you wish to celebrate this year.” Nicky gave up looking for the francs, instead standing completely still in a way that would indicate any other man was itching to pace the room. “This dinner is not for you. This is for this woman, this  _ child _ that we know nothing about.”

He looked to Joe then, with eyes that were almost wild, for his conservative Nicky. “I know nothing about children, Joe. What do they eat?”

Booker scoffed. “Was he like this when you guys found me?”

Joe huffed, a small smile growing on his face. “Nearly. He tried to learn to knit to make you scarves and blankets when he felt how cold it was in our dreams. We compromised with the feast instead.”

It was a glorious feast, at that, borne out of Nicky’s lasting dread of starvation. They had dreamed for months, as Booker traversed the cold Russian winter, of hunger so painful it lingered in their stomachs even in their waking hours.

Unfortunately, there was no simple equivalent between lavishly feeding a starving man and taking care of a young girl whose throat had been slit. Though, Joe was sure, Nicky must have thought long and hard about certain types of armour that protected the neck. Unfortunately, they don’t make kevlar scarves.

Joe looked now to his love, his life, as the man ran a hand through his hair so slowly that Joe was sure it would shake if their bodies still allowed that sort of thing.

“Nicky, Nicolo,” He said, pulling Nicky from his worries, “Let’s go simple, okay? We have all the time in the world to wow her. Fresh pasta, salad, a good wine - simple French, oui?”

Nicky frowned for a moment, then nodded. “Everyone likes good pasta. If not, well. We cannot save all of them, I suppose.”

Joe laughed, loud and deep, and even Booker chuckled from behind his screen. “No, no we cannot. Come, I have some notes from my bag, we can go pick out some nice tomatoes from that little market in town. Maybe pick up some wine and pastries while we’re there.” He idly straightened Nicky’s button-up as he spoke, relishing the way Nicky’s chest flushed just barely from the action.

“D’accord,” Nicky agreed in a truly terrible French accent.

“I should probably go with you guys,” Booker added, a little wary at what passed for French from Nicky’s mouth, “Might make haggling a little easier if they don’t think you’re dumb tourists.

“Nous serons bien, Le Livre,” Joe answered in an accent that he humbly considered to be much more accurate than his beloved’s. Nicky had always been slow on languages, accents, and the like. He didn’t have the advantage of being a merchant’s son or being entrenched in such a changing world from the start of it all as Joe and Booker had, respectively. “Tu te concentres juste sur la recherche de Copley, ouais?”

Booker shrugged, moreso with his eyebrows than his shoulders. Hundreds of years had worn down their movements, Booker and Nicky, until only the barest of gestures said more than words.

Joe turned to Nicky with a wide smile - he, at least, fought against the erosion of expression, if only to show Nicky in more than words exactly how much he is affected by the mere presence of his beloved. “Es-tu prêt à partir?”

Nicky flashed one of his invisible smiles. “Oui, mon sol.”

Okay, so maybe this visit to France wouldn’t be so bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my mind, Booker is 100% a Cancer, Nicky is a Virgo and Joe is a Pisces. 
> 
> (The end note that previously took up this space was for the second chapter, which is still in edits. Whoops 🤷🏻♂️)
> 
> the French translates as follows  
> Nicky: D'accord - okay  
> Joe: Nous serons bien, Le Livre - we'll be fine, Booker  
> Tu te concentres juste sur la recherche de Copley, ouais? - You just concentrate on the search for Copley, okay?  
> Es-tu prêt à partir? - are you ready to leave?


	2. Family Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their first meal as a family!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said I would wait until I finished ch 3 to post this, yes, but then I moved suddenly and my birthday came and went and work got crazy and, well. I'd rather it be out there for you all to enjoy over just sitting in my google drive forever. Ch 3 is started, only a few more points to hit, and will be finished as soon as I can carve out the time. In the meantime, enjoy!

“You can take a break, you know,” Joe said to Booker as they sat side by side in the pseudo living room. He kept one ear out for Nicky’s soft humming in the kitchen as he cooked, some song he’d learned from a children’s movie about a rat. It was, regrettably, one of the only songs in French Nicky knew the words to. At least it was appropriately about food.

Booker shook his head, taking another long dredge of his scotch. “Not until I find him.”

“He’s a trained spy, Booker,” Joe reasoned, swirling around the wine in his glass. The safehouse only had stemless glasses, short and square at the bottom and wholly unfit for good wine. He had learned however, after he’d shrugged off the more strict rules of his faith and first tasted palm wine from the mouth of a hastily crafted clay jug, that good wine was never to be wasted, no matter the container. “It will take more than a few hours poking about at your computer to uncover his trail.”

Sighing heavily, Booker leaned back from the screen. “At least you know what it is. I’m almost afraid Nicky’s serious when he calls it a ‘typer.’”

Nicky actually knew much more about modern technology than he let on, he just found it amusing that Booker thought him that ignorant. “Oh, he’s absolutely serious. My poor Nicky is clueless when it comes to modern technology. He still believes the Earth is flat and the sun revolves around us.”

Booker almost choked on his scotch, causing Joe to laugh. If anyone knew modern sciences, it was Nicky. Joe preferred to spend his time admiring art and fashion and culture, but Nicky’s analytical mind wouldn’t cease until he knew the ins and outs of anything that captured his attention. How Booker still fell for these jokes was beyond Joe.

The door on the other side of the living room slammed open before Booker had fully recovered. Joe stood immediately, reaching a hand towards the hilt of his scimitar where it rested against the arm of the chair. Booker pulled his gun and aimed through his coughs, and even Nicky’s soft humming had gone suspiciously quiet.

Andy walked in, throwing her jacket and bag to the side as she walked past their threats as if they meant nothing. Though, Joe supposed, she was right in that respect. They could no more hurt her than she could them, immortality or not.

“The feast almost laid out, Nicky?” Andy called into the kitchen, stretching her arms high above her head.

Joe let the tension bleed out of his body, dropping his hand back to his side. “Nice entrance, boss.”

Andy shrugged, looking less than impressed by their showing. “I was trying to give you the chance to look intimidating. You didn’t quite hit the mark.”

Joe frowned at that - why would he ever wish to intimidate her, or any innocent person for that matter? - until he heard a thump at the door.

There she was, finally, dropping another bag near the fireplace. Her face was so wide and expressive, the suspicion laid bare for all to see. She held herself like a warrior, yes, but he could see the hesitation, the way she kept one foot metaphorically in the door as if she would bolt if given the chance. Her eyes darted around the room quick as a cat’s, notably pausing on Booker’s gun, Joe’s scimitar, Nicky’s sword hanging from the coat rack, the not-quite-inconspicuous pile of machine guns and Joe’s favourite shotgun on the table in the corner. He could almost see the escape plans formulating in her mind.

He had a feeling she would fit in quite nicely, once she chose to.

And that was the difference, wasn’t it? She had almost no time to come to terms with her life, unlike the rest of them. They had all spent years vulnerable, alone, thinking through every possible permutation of a never-ending existence. She hadn’t had the time to long for company, to yearn for something so base as a single person who understood, let alone family. She would choose to stay, he knew, eventually. But how long that decision would take now that the option was given to her so early, before she even understood why she would want it, Joe did not know.

Well, he would just have to take a page from Nicky’s book and be particularly convincing, wouldn’t he?

“Ah, finally!” He opened his arms wide to the girl, inviting her for a hug. She didn’t accept, only warily eyed him like he was likely to stab her the second she glanced away. Given that Andy was her first introduction, Joe wasn’t very surprised at all. He lowered his arms and gave her a warm smile instead. “We have longed to meet you. I’m  Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib. Joe,” he added more warmly after watching her face twist in concentration. She was probably trying to remember all of that, sweet girl. Booker, upon first introduction, had just rolled his eyes and said, with much aplomb and even more Frenchness,  _ Zho-sef, alors. _

“Nile,” She said, brows still knitted tight together, “Nile Freeman.”

Joe rolled the name around in his head. A good name, beautiful. Nicky was of the idea that names were the least important thing about a person, but Joe felt just the opposite. A name changes you, shapes you. Nicky’s name told everyone where he came from, Joe’s was a family tree, detailing those who loved him. Nile’s was such strength, such power. An ever-changing, steady-paced source of life for so many, and even her surname was an act of declaration. Free man, a man who was once shackled, having escaped from his bonds. 

He didn’t say any of this to her, only showed it the best he could in the slant of his smile. Her frown got tighter.

Booker raised a hand, somehow now fitted with a cigarette between his fingers, as if it magically appeared along with Andy. Joe wasn’t entirely dissuaded of that being fact. “Booker.”

His prickly greeting seemed to almost put her more at ease. She nodded at him firmly, standing almost at parade rest.

The commotion had pulled Nicky from his work in the kitchen - though, knowing Nicky, the meal was already prepared. He couldn’t stand to leave food to cook alone, thought it degraded the quality.

He approached Nile with soft steps, his eyes like soft summer dawns. A nervous thumb rubbed at his bottom lip for a flash of a second. “Nicolo of Genoa, but you can call me Nicky.”

Nile looked even more skeptical, if that were possible. “ You guys  are the army Andy was talking about? None of you look like you could kill anyone.”

Joe and Booker laughed together, loud and free, and even Nicky ducked his head slightly to hide the shade of a smile that grew there.

“There’s more than meets the eye, Miss Freeman,” Joe intoned, winking. “We have collectively fought in more wars than you may ever have heard of.”

She pursed her lips, running that through her mind, then seemed to shrug mentally. Whatever she was contemplating seemed to be put aside for another time. “What’s cooking? It smells good.”

To say the sun shone through Nicky’s face would be an understatement. “I made dinner for us all,” He said with such deep gratification in his voice, “Come, the table is already set.”

Even Andy followed quickly, stomach growling along the way. If her previous solo missions were any indicator, she barely ate anything while she was gone save baklava. Though, to be fair, baklava was a wonderful thing to have, if nothing else.

Nicky, ever so thoughtful, had attempted to set five places at the table, which was made only for four, crowding them all together just close enough to feel each others’ presence at their elbows. They all had bowls of salad and a heaping plate of fettuccine with red sauce, along with thick slices of baguette that sat alongside a bottle of olive oil, for the more Italian faring, and a log of buche de chevre, for the more French faring. Joe, to the shock and disgust of both Nicky and Booker, decided to add a slice of the cheese to his bread before drenching the whole thing in oil. It was an acquired taste, but it was a decision well made, given they haven’t had their eternal fight over who is most correct in their bread eating in a few decades, united by the fact that they were both more correct than Joe, in that regard.

At least Joe was better than Andy, who crumbled her bread in her fist and dropped it over her pasta in crumbly chunks like feta. Even Joe could only just hold back his flinch upon seeing that for the first time.

Nile, thankfully, ate hers plain, though he did see her eyeing the table to look for something else to add on top. What that could possibly be, Joe would not dare hazard a guess. The debate had been at rest for years, he had no desire to start it up again.

The silence at the table was palpable, only bearable by the liberal application of alcohol - wine, in his case, an entire bottle of vodka for Andy, which she was dangerously close to finishing off, and a fifth of whisky for Booker. Of them, only Nile and Nicky abstained. Nicky, Joe knew, was still under the impression that wine was only to be enjoyed fully, when the mind was unoccupied by other distractions. Nile was probably simply unwilling to let her guard down in front of a group of strangers that willingly confessed to having killed many men. While disappointing, Joe didn’t blame her in the least.

“So,” Nile broke the silence about halfway through their meal, “Are you guys good guys or bad guys?”

Joe smiled, remembering his own innocence fondly, when he could cleave the world neatly into good and evil, right and wrong. That, of course, was before he met one on the side of evil, the side of the Franks that had repeatedly laid waste to his people. Before he met and killed and was in turn killed by the man he hated, the man he was awed by, the man he grew to love.

“Depends on the century,” he said instead, hedging the truth. He would never lie to her, just as he would never lie to Nicky or Andy or Booker, not when it really mattered. He just didn’t feel it right yet to unburden her from her naivety just yet. It was refreshing, in a way.

Nicky, at least, was more open, more honest. His Nicky never shied away from saying exactly how he felt. “We fight for what we think is right.”

Nile seemed satisfied with that, almost. Though naturally there are always more questions than answers in the beginning. “How are you all in my dreams?”

At least that answer was easy. “We dream of each other,” He said sparing a glance to Nicky, who haunted his dreams like a spectre until the day they put down their swords for good, “They stop when we meet.”

“Why?”

Joe opened his mouth to answer, stopping himself when Nicky perked up eagerly. “I believe it’s because we- we’re meant to find each other.” He looked to Joe with his moonlight eyes and almost invisible smile, “It’s like destiny.”

Joe couldn’t help but wink back at him playfully. Nicky never set out to sound romantic - he expressed his love in actions and touch and glances that only Joe could decipher - but yet he could spout poetry so unintentionally, without any effort, it almost put Joe to shame in that regard. Almost.

The conversation wandered about to Booker and his grief, to the Napoleonic Wars, Nile displaying astonishing intuition for one so young. And then her piercing eyes fell to him.

“So...you’re even older than him,” She pointed at Booker with the flat end of her fork.

Joe hummed around a mouthful of sweet wine. “Nicky and I met in the Crusades.”

The common term still tripped over his tongue, like it didn’t belong there. For Nicky’s people, it was a crusade, yes. For Joe, it was an invasion of his home. The way it was all sanitized these days still bothered him, distantly.

“The Crusades?” Nile leaned forward, as if pushing closer to them would pressure them into unveiling it as a lie, a joke told solely to pull the rug from under her feet.

Nicky smiled, fully this time so even Nile could see. “The love of my life was of the people I’d been taught to hate.”

“We-” Joe laughed, remembering the times Nicky had bemoaned that very topic so dramatically, complaining that if only he had seen through their lies earlier he could have had so many more of Joe’s touches, his kisses, his longing looks over burning fires and in soft embraces. Even more amusing was that the most wonderful relationship of his life started with getting stabbed quite literally in the heart by a man he’d been taught was dirty and stupid and impolite. Oh, how wrong they were. “We killed each other.”

“Many times,” Nicky responded, the other half of a joke meant only for them.

The conversation moved on to discuss Andy and all her years. Joe knew how old she was, within a handful of years, but he knew she would never admit that to the newbies. Even Booker thought she had forgotten, ignorant as he was to the way the passage of years sat heavy in your bones. How even after a mere 900 to Andy’s thousands he could measure the ways the world has eroded the person he was born as, the person he died as for the first time.

Nile, at least, seemed to understand the enormity of things she will not truly feel for a few hundred more years. The tension in her shoulders and around her eyes wilted, leaving her more child than soldier, in that moment.

“It is a lot to understand,” Nicky said, soft and brotherly, “I think you should get some rest. Come with me, I’ll show you.”

It said a lot that he didn’t even comment on how her plate was still mostly full, how she probably hadn’t eaten properly in days. Rest came first, especially after they had all fractured her world into a kaleidoscope of impossibilities she was far too young to understand.

Nicky led her away, to the bed he’d made up for her with the quilt that reminded him and Joe both of the frail Turkish woman who’d try to teach them the art hundreds of years ago. No matter how long they had it, it still smelled like apricots and saltwater. Those smells would, Joe hoped, be comforting.

If he remembered correctly, she would not get very much sleep these next few nights, haunted as she would be by spectres of Quynh. If she was still alive down there, that is. Joe wasn’t sure if he hoped she had died by now, after more than three hundred years trapped in an iron coffin. He couldn’t decide which was the lesser fate.

They stayed up a few more hours after Nile went to bed, allowing her not only some time to digest it all, but also some much needed rest. The dreams, they knew, only came when all those affected were asleep at the same time. If Quynh was still alive, if Booker was still dreaming of her drowning over and over again for eternity, then it would suit them all to stay up just a little longer, check on more leads for Copley’s location, tend to their gear.

Joe worked on cleaning up the dinner first, finding solace in the wash of warm water over his hands. It reminded him, as it often did, of the long years he spent in feverish worship of Allah, how he would wake before dawn, stop in the middle of travel, even once hiding away during battle to wash his hands and feet and the top of his head before bowing, kneeling, pressing his head to the ground in prayer.

Now, it held a similar feeling. He had the chance to center himself, reset. Andy did so with violence, Booker with booze, and Nicky with his journals detailing all the things he wished never to forget. Joe only needed to stand in the eye of the storm, rivulets of water sluicing away his troubles, the blood that seeped into his bones, all the hard decisions that came by his hands.

After the dishes were clean, and long moments after he stood motionless while the water between his fingers ran cold, Nicky came up beside him, book in hand.

“The differences are startling,” He said quietly, barely louder than the running of the tap, “He was so lost when we found him, so broken. She seems...stronger, in knowing. Like a truth has been unlocked inside her heart.”

Joe turned off the tap, leaning into the space Nicky occupied at his side so just his elbow and wrist and shoulder brushed lightly into Nicky’s front. “She’s a fighter. Booker spent more time running away from war than he did in it. She ran towards the fight, despite the risks. She has more strength than any of us had our first time around.”

Nicky’s hand landed at Joe’s waist, so faintly he almost couldn’t feel it through the rough material of his pants. “She will mellow him, I think. Bring a sweetness in her that he’s been craving.”

“You are plenty sweet, my love,” Joe kissed Nicky’s shoulder through his layers. 

Nicky hummed. “He cannot see the trees for the forest, nor me for us. We are inextricable in his mind, and so he thinks we can never share his grief for we have never lost the ones we loved as he did.”

“We are inextricable in my mind as well, Nicolo, but that doesn’t mean we had no families, no connections.” He thought fleetingly of his uncle, his sisters, his older brother. Their faces were lost to the winds of time, now, like the topmost layers of sand in the desert, but their spectres still hung around him like thick shadows some days. He knows for Nicky it’s the same. He knows Nicky had a wife he left behind. A child. Nicky left prepared to die, but he was in no way prepared for what he lost, when Joe met him.

The hand on his waist tightens considerably, as if Nicky’s thoughts followed the same path. “He should not base his grief on our happiness,” Nicky’s thumb rubbed circles into the back of Joe’s hip, right where Nicky had first stabbed him with a stiletto, in their first dozen attempts at taking the life of the other. “And yet he does. I hope Nile can be more of a contemporary to him, more accessible. I hope she can lead his way out of the darkness he has exiled himself to.”

Joe smiled privately, leaning further back into Nicky’s embrace. “One can only hope.”

“If you two are done eyefucking over there,” Andy called over from the living room, “Then you’d better get some sleep.”

She walked into the room, freshly changed and looking slightly less worse for wear. “As soon as Booker gets the drop on Copley, we probably won’t have time to stop and rest for a long while.”

She wasn’t wrong. Last time they were found out, locked up in a lab to be taken apart piece by piece, they didn’t stop sprinting at top speed for months afterwards, slowing to a run, then to a walk over years. It would be tough to get used to, for someone as young as Nile, but she was strong. Plus, until they knew how Copley had figured out their secret, they could never be sure where danger lied.

“No problem, boss.” Nicky answered, hooking his chin on Joe’s shoulder. “We even promise to be chaste all night.”

Joe pulled his face away from Nicky’s, frowning playfully. “Don’t make promises for me that I don’t intend to keep.”

They weren’t going to do anything but sleep, of course -- not with Booker and Nile sleeping in the same room. It was fun to goad Andy, though, and even more fun to see her look to the heavens, muttering as if there were anything up there she believed in enough to bargain with.

“Just try not to scandalize the kid too much. It’s only her first night.”

Joe grinned big, wrapping his fingers around Nicky’s thin wrists. “No promises!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nile, if you're curious, was looking for butter. Condiment culture is really weird - ketchup for fries still confuses me, it's so sugary like jam - so I relished the opportunity to throw that little scene in.  
> Also the song Nicky is singing is Le Festin, from Ratatouille.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to write the next chapter before I posted this, but then I had the IronHusbands big bang, and my brain spun out five (maybe more, I have at least five actively open) new fics that stole away my muse, so I finally decided just to post this chapter since I have it. I hate holding out on y'all for so long, so here's to hoping the next wait isn't as lengthy.  
> also this one is a little shorter, since the time constraint was very tightly run here in the movie, so there wasn't much space to contend with, timewise.  
> Regardless, I hope y'all enjoy!

Joe was actually having a nice dream, for once. Usually he dreamt of arid deaths, Nicky’s blood, Booker’s ribs freezing pale and cold, Andy withering away in front of them. His subconscious was quite the imaginative worrier, Joe had learned, but every once in a while it allowed him to rest from such anxieties. This night he dreamt of long corridors and scrolls of characters from a language long since extinct. Rose petals fell through the ceiling, or maybe from the ceiling, blanketing him in their soft kisses. Nicky showed up soon after - Nicky was always in Joe’s dreams, even if just in spirit - and wrapped his arms around Joe, smooth and warm and tight in the way Joe craved, making his ribs creak.

Then a shout, and Nicky jumped away from him, and suddenly Joe was back awake in the church, lying on a musty mattress in his jeans and boots. Joe blinked hard, forcing his eyes to focus as he reached out for Nicky, he had to make sure Nicky was there before anything else, tapping on his lover’s hip. It was a reassurance for both of them, that Joe was awake and alive, that Nicky was with him and at the ready. 

Once his world came back fully into focus - Nicky was lowering his gun, Nile was apologizing in something Germanic (almost certainly English, but at this point in his long life, who knows?), Booker was swearing under his breath in French, and Andy was...nowhere to be seen. Of course. She never slept when she could get away with it, much to everyone else’s chagrin.

Joe groaned and leaned back into the bed, adrenaline bleeding away from his bones. Even Nicky flagged a little at the lack of danger, putting away his gun and rubbing at his head in that adorable way he had.

“Tell us,” Nicky was saying, in response to whatever Nile had said that Joe missed. 

Nile shook her head. “I saw flashes of it before, when I dreamt of you all.”

Fuck. Joe sat up, making space for Nicky at his side. This was going to be rough.

An iron coffin, Nile called it. The mad woman drowning, screaming as her lungs filled with sea water. Joe shuddered to think what his dear friend had become.

“Her name was Quynh,” Nicky said, as if she were dead, gone, something less horrifying than being trapped in the pitch black of the bottom of the ocean, dying over and over again for eternity.

“She was one of us,” Joe added. She was more than that, a confidant and friend and  _ family _ , but such things were always so hard to convey in words, especially when confined to one language and half asleep still. “The first immortal Andy found. They had been alone so long when she found her… Quynh had given up.”

His heart hurt to think of her so hopeless then, how Andy spent her days teaching Quynh that hope always exists even in the most unlikely places. How Quynh must have no hope left again, now stuck in a place none of them can reach.

“Before me and Nicky, it was just the two of them,” He continued, trying his best to impart just how important Quynh and Andy were to each other. It was not his relationship to define, not his story to tell, but they were just as close, bonded just as strongly as him and Nicolo. Surely Nile deserved to know at least that. “They ran through the world together. Fought thousands of battles side by side. She was a pit viper in a fight.”

It was one of the things that kept him going when his skies turned grey and oppressive around him, the fact that Quynh was a spitfire that would kick his ass for acting so melancholy if she were around. If she were ever to be around again.

Nicky picked up the story, explaining how she was lost, how they had tried so hard to find her. And then even Nicky’s even voice failed, falling short of just how painful it was to all of them, to lose one of their own like that.

“They got sentenced, again and again,” Joe whispered, something in him compelling him to finish this, to give Nile everything so that it weighed on her heart just as heavily as it weighed on his. He knew it was selfish, but he also knew that there was a reason they operated how they did, and Nile needed to know that.

She needed to know the downfalls, of both being the one who is lost and the one who lost.

Nile, it seemed, wasn’t ready for that knowledge.

She walked out without a word, presumably to try to digest this all. It was a lot to deal with, immortality and the threat of eternity in a cage. The loss of everyone and everything you knew. The constant running and fighting, with barely any break. It would rattle even the most steady of people.

It rattled even them, after hundreds of years, to think of it.

Suffice to say, no one was getting any more sleep tonight.

Andy chased after Nile and Booker went to turn on the TV to drown out the sound of drowning that he once told Joe rattled around his brain for hours afterwards. Nicky sat quietly for a moment, back to Joe, sighing.

“I wish we could help her more,” Nicky said, soft and sad. “There is so much now, much more than we ever had to consider. I fear none of us can truly sympathize with her perils.”

Joe shrugged, leaning in to drape himself over Nicky’s back. “Quynh said the same of us, if you remember. ‘However could I presume to understand the plight of two mortal enemies who share such a rare gift? Two men who find nothing in common except the one thing almost no one else in the world possesses?’” Joe quoted, trying his best to maintain Quynh’s mellifluous, almost chiming tone.

Nicky shook his head. “And yet Nile is alone.”

Joe hugged Nicky harder, digging his fingertips into the soft pouch of skin and fat just above Nicky’s hipbones. “She has us, ya amar. She always will.”

Nicky just hummed, sitting in silence for a moment.

“Do you think,” He asked, a few long minutes later, tone conspiratory, “That Sebastien would allow me to watch the game with him this time, now that Nile is here?”

Joe laughed, loud and brash. “No, no, no. Not a chance in hell, habibi. Last time you watched a game together you stabbed him in the gut because France won. They weren’t even playing against Italy!”

Nicky huffed. “I predate Italy.” He leaned over and grabbed a book at random from the table at the foot of the bed. “But I acquiesce. Watch your game, I will lose myself in this wonderful novel on...Jesus.”

Turning the book in his hands, Joe spotted the title on the spine.  _ La Bible _ . Of course, of all the books available, Nicky’s hands would choose to pick the one he knew by heart.

Joe chuckled, pressing one last kiss into the junction of Nicky’s shoulder before standing to join Booker at the TV.

PSG was playing, Joe noted as he sat heavily in the remaining armchair. It didn’t very much matter who against - someone in red that he didn’t immediately recognise - since much of their opinions on football relied on the fact that Booker was unnaturally obsessed with PSG while Joe hated them on principle. Something about their smugness bothered him. That, and he had to have something to chide Booker with during their off times. Booker, Joe had learned, found it easier to hate than to love.

Nicky sat behind them both near the kitchen - probably considering whether Nile would appreciate some hot chocolate (which when Nicky made it, Joe thought, it was closer to pudding than beverage, but the comfort was the same) - sitting hunched over his book at the table.

Joe settled in, letting himself get lost in the game. There was a truly terrible call on the field - “In what world is that considered offsides?” Booker shouted in French, throwing his hands in the air - and Joe shouted along, cheering on his team, whoever they were. 

Joe was almost lost enough in the game that he missed the door bang open in a move that was decidedly un-Andy-like. It took him almost half a second, too long in their line of work, to realise what was happening. 

They’d been found.

He sprinted full pelt towards Nicky, who was the furthest from the door which meant the furthest from their stash of weapons. Booker was too slow to react, catching a smoke grenade in the chest. As much as it hurt Joe to see, it would hurt to see Nicky injured even more.

The gas was filling up the room and Joe’s lungs, but he reached Nicky in time, grabbing his wrist to lead them both into the bedroom and through the window there.

He heard Nicky coughing, felt his own throat close, then was struck by the now-familiar sensation of a bullet tearing through his ribcage - the small flick to his back, like a pebble hitting his spine, followed by a terrible heat expanding in his chest. With his last few seconds, he squeezed Nicky’s wrist, a warning and a promise in one, and shielded his lover’s body best he could as he fell hard into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, I hate PSG, what of it? They're just so,,, smug. I support Nice, thank you very much. Hatem Ben Arfa is a fucking beast on the pitch. Joe, obviously, would agree.


End file.
